Hoda Kotb is opening up about her decision to become a mom at 52. On this morning’s episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, the Today anchor revealed why it took her so long to finally admit that she wanted children.
According to Kotb — who is now 59 — the last decade of her life has been “great.” She told host Drew Barrymore that she “started saying things out loud” instead of dreaming, hoping and wishing for them.
“I was walking with a girlfriend one day and she said to me, ‘We never wanted kids, right?’” Kotb recalled. “I always did but I never said it because I had missed that train and I went through some things when I was younger, so that was not gonna happen.”
She added, “I stopped on the street and I looked at her and I said, ‘Actually, I always did.’”
Kotb was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, which left her unable to conceive. But something in her life changed when she finally “spoke the words out loud.”
“I didn’t say it because if I said it it’d be like me saying I want to be an astronaut. You know, things that aren’t happening,” she said. “Something weird happened when I said it out loud. I spoke the words out loud and it was like the universe was listening.”
The veteran anchor remembered going home from her walk that day to find actress Sandra Bullock on the TV talking about adopting her son.
“I was like, ‘Sandra Bullock’s my age.’ So I saw that. And then I turned and I saw something else and something else and something else and the world started cooperating,” she said. “And it struck me.”
Kotb continued, “If you have a hope, a dream, a wish, a desire, whisper it. Even if you’re just doing it to yourself in the bathroom mirror. Who cares where you say it? But once the words are out, something happens.”
In her case, she went to an adoption agency and now she is the mother to two daughters: Haley, 7, and Hope, 5.
The Drew Barrymore Show airs on weekdays on CBS. You can check the website for local airtimes.
